3M 680CR Premasking or Prespacing?

[SellersSign&Design]

I go through a 10 yard roll of 680CR about every week. After trying a bunch of paper premasking I settled on Grimco's Briteline. It doesn't hold on to the air release liner all that great, but I haven't found anything that does. Today I ran some really big graphics (compared to what I normally do) through the printer and contour cut them. The piece was about 25" tall and 8' long, lettering and striping all mixed together with a lot of negative space. I loaded the Briteline masking into my laminator and put it down, but then when I tried to roll it up the liner started buckling. I tried rolling it on a core and it looked like I had wadded the whole thing up, it was horrible. I have it laying flat now, I think it may be salvageable but there is no way to roll it up to transport it. So after this disaster I was reading online that 3M's prespacing tape is reccomended for 680CR with a lot of liner showing after contour cutting and weeding, has anyone used this and does it work? Even though the Briteline works for most of what I do, I have to have something that will work when I have to deal with this big stuff.

 

[ikarasu]

I haven't used that specific combo, but did you roll it with the printer facing in, or facing out? Whenever we roll stuff facing in it gets big buckles and wrinkles. Whenever we roll it facing out, it gets rid of the problem by like 95%.

 

[SellersSign&Design]

I haven't used that specific combo, but did you roll it with the printer facing in, or facing out? Whenever we roll stuff facing in it gets big buckles and wrinkles. Whenever we roll it facing out, it gets rid of the problem by like 95%.

I always roll it with the vinyl facing out, backer facing in. It seems to me that the issue is the low bond of the vinyl and masking to the air release liner. Big designs like this with a lot of negative space and a lot of liner exposed are when it really shows itself.

 

[Patentagosse]

3M's paper trasfer tape are premiums, heavy-weight. I use the 44x on most on the stuff I print n' cut (big rig graphics kit 10ft - 14ft long). If you want a transfer tape that holds better on air-release liners, my best one here is a clear one from TransfeRite. 'Don't know why but this one seems to stick the any liners.

Sometime I'm getting ready-to-install kits from converting companies like Sharpline, Universal Products... their transfer tape is always bonding good on the liners... maybe they have heat-assist laminators (???)

 

[bannertime]

To add to what Patentagoose said, we got TransferRite samples from a local tape company, Bron, one was specifically made for sticking to air release backings. It worked pretty well.

 

[SellersSign&Design]

I was sent some stuff from Grimco that was supposedly made for the air release liners, but it was clear and I've never had good luck with that stuff. The thing that aggravated me the most was I actually took the time to load the transfer tape in the laminator to put it on this piece since it was so big and I wanted to make sure everything was flat and wrinkle free, and it seems like it did worse than if I would've squeegeed it down by hand. I have a roll of the prespacing tape coming in tomorrow, I'll try it out and then report back on how it did.